


SHEPARD NEVER

by spicyshimmy



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Blow Jobs, M/M, Slash, Teen Romance, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-28
Updated: 2012-09-29
Packaged: 2017-11-13 01:18:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/497803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicyshimmy/pseuds/spicyshimmy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mrs. Alenko knows what's up. Shepard doesn't. Kaidan figures it out. They get closer, somehow, despite being bad at it. And Shepard finally eats dinner with part of the family. <i>Nobody could dodge raindrops. Not even Shepard.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. KAIDAN

Shepard never wore a raincoat.

Somewhere else, maybe it wouldn’t have been such a big deal, but in Vancouver, there was no chance he’d get away without getting wet, no matter _how_ fast the motorcycle went. Nobody could dodge raindrops. Not even Shepard.

Kaidan thought about getting him a raincoat for a week when the weather turned cold and again when the cold turned nasty. He thought about asking Mom what she thought about that idea, too, until he realized he knew exactly what she’d say in exactly the voice she’d use to say it.

_Kaidan, if you even have to ask, then you already know the answer._

Shepard had a windbreaker with a hood that he put up over the flop of hair Kaidan had seen him grow out last winter, then buzzed off once summer actually showed up to the island. When it got wet, it didn’t curl. It didn’t even frizz. It dried quick and Shepard could push his fingers through it without thinking and without messing it up.

That meant Kaidan could mess it up for him. He had, once or twice, trying it out when they kissed, fingertips on Shepard’s scalp, palms covering the warm shells of his ears. And when Kaidan slid his tongue over Shepard’s bottom lip, Shepard’s mouth always opened up the way it didn’t whenever they were watching a movie—or heading back to Kaidan’s after school or even lying in the treehouse, nobody else around to interrupt them, Shepard’s silence and the sound of the rain starting to fall.

If Shepard never bothered with a raincoat, he definitely didn’t give much thought to an umbrella. Sometimes he grabbed one from Thrifty’s on his way out only to return it later, to hold it closer to Kaidan so Kaidan had to sneak in, walking right up against his side.

But that was Shepard. Somebody who didn’t wear a raincoat; somebody who only used borrowed umbrellas; somebody who didn’t have to put his hood up when it rained.

‘I think you just like the towels,’ Kaidan said, tossing him one across the room. The spray on his glasses meant he had to clean them off—with a tissue, not the official blue square with the zig-zag edges that he stuffed under the books in his top drawer whenever Shepard came over—and that left streaks on the glass, a few blurry spots in Kaidan’s vision.

Shepard maneuvered into one of them like a pro, drying his hair off with the towel instead of shaking his head and splashing all over.

That was something Kaidan _had_ given him, like a hickey on his throat he had to flip his collar up to keep it hidden, or a hoodie he could wear so he wasn’t always bumming sweaters. Small gifts. When there was actually a reason to give them.

Christmas was coming up. Maybe Kaidan would be the lamest boyfriend ever and get him a raincoat then—and some Star Wars DVDs, and this Millennium Falcon model he’d bought off eBay, keeping it in his closet in a shoebox so Shepard wouldn’t find it while he was over.

‘Your lips are blue,’ Kaidan said.

‘Maybe they just…need to get warmed up,’ Shepard replied.

His ears were pink, too, and the rest of his face was white, freckles dark on his throat, the collar of his t-shirt damp and speckles of rain scattered down the front. For a few seconds, at least, Kaidan was able to forget about whatever his hair was doing and hanging his raincoat up so it’d dry and getting them both new pairs of socks. Like any of that mattered. Like the usual stuff applied when Shepard was in the room; like Kaidan needed hot chocolate to warm up when he had Shepard.

And he actually had him. Somewhere between the bed and the balcony and the door into the hall, the closet and the desk and the chair. Four walls. One Shepard.

Kaidan kissed him, one of those surging kisses that almost knocked them both backwards. Shepard hooked his fingers into the waistband of Kaidan’s jeans—he didn’t even seem to notice the damp denim—and Kaidan shivered for the first time because of Shepard’s fingers, clammy, on warm skin.

‘Hey,’ Shepard said, one of his heys that meant _sorry_ or _I’m tired_ or _we should be kissing_ , although to be fair the last one was probably mostly projection. Or, even more likely, they were all mostly projection. ‘I’ll just…’

Shepard pulled his hands back, rubbing them together and huffing on them.

Kaidan tried to think if he’d ever seen Shepard wear gloves, but he couldn’t remember.

‘I… I got it,’ Kaidan said. When he blew on Shepard’s fingers it shouldn’t have been as hot as it was, lips hovering over scraped knuckles. ‘…What happened to your hands?’

His breath was warm still, Shepard’s fingers less cold, Kaidan’s mouth brushing the skin of one fingertip—by accident. Sort of.

Shepard didn’t answer right away, like he hadn’t noticed there was anything wrong, or like he thought hands just came with cuts and bruises.

‘Oh. That?’ Shepard shrugged. ‘Just boxes. We restocked today.’

You _restocked today,_ Kaidan thought. Donnelly never actually helped. He knew he shouldn’t have kissed Shepard’s knuckles but he did, and felt them twitch against his bottom lip, muffling his voice when he asked ‘You wanna, um…’

‘Yeah,’ Shepard said.

There was just something about getting onto the bed that was awkward and clumsy and as good as it was strange, always a knee bumping here or there and the frame creaking; they went from being all elbows to being all deep breaths swelling against each other, noses bumping, Kaidan’s glasses off. No blind spots, but he still couldn’t exactly see everything he wanted to. And the kissing—getting his tongue inside Shepard’s mouth while Shepard brought him closer by the hips and let Kaidan rock against his thigh—nothing came close to that.

Kaidan couldn’t get close enough.

At least he could swallow the noises Shepard made, soft and messy as his hair and just as hot.

Each time, he got closer and closer to the fly on Shepard’s jeans. Last Friday he’d managed to undo the button when they heard the front door swinging shut and Shepard undid what’d taken Kaidan almost forty-five minutes to work his way up to doing. Or, technically, to work his way _down_ to doing. His fingers could still feel the cool circle of stamped metal, warming up under Kaidan’s thumb, the smell getting into the whorls of Kaidan’s fingerprint.

It’d lasted through the night, but then it was gone by morning.

It was Thursday now, almost a week of trying to do some damage control on the last interruption, trying to get back to the moment when Kaidan’s knuckles successfully bumped Shepard’s erection over the double-line of denim, how nothing happened except for Shepard forgetting to breathe when Kaidan popped the button out of the hole.

Well, and except for the door slamming shut and Shepard rocketing out of bed like he was Bond, James Bond, and Kaidan had accidentally bumped the passenger ejector in his Aston Martin.

Kaidan palmed Shepard through the denim, thumb on the zipper but not actually doing anything with it. Not yet, anyway. Shepard’s hips pushed forward and Kaidan wondered if this was actually Shepard’s secret language, a series of handshakes and silences and trapped little noises that said everything he couldn’t. Not in words, anyway. There weren’t any words for it—although Kaidan kept trying to write essays.

Shepard kept not putting his hands up Kaidan’s shirt, coming close to the hem, tricking it higher by another inch, then covering old ground again. The craziness felt amazing, of course, because it always did, but there had to be a point when the pressure in the system tipped the balance from amazing to explosive. And the determining factor would have to be the way Shepard opened his mouth and scraped Kaidan’s tongue with his lips, or rubbed the hair below Kaidan’s navel side to side, or kept tugging at Kaidan’s tight jeans like they’d actually come off that way, over the curve of Kaidan’s ass.

They wouldn’t. They were honestly way, way too tight for that. Kaidan thought about undoing his own fly, if that was what he should do to take things—literally—into his own hands. But the idea of Shepard’s eyes on him froze Kaidan’s fingers as easily as it melted his belly, pulse after pulse in the deepest core of Kaidan’s spine.

Maybe Kaidan was the one making noises now, crushed gasps Shepard’s mouth was already open to swallow. Like they were only breathing each other, or using each other up. Like that was all they knew how to do.

Kaidan rolled Shepard over. Shepard let him and it wasn’t a strategy, some samurai thing he’d picked up from Garrus. It was just Shepard beneath, the tips of Shepard’s fingers pushed under the waistband of Kaidan’s jeans, Shepard’s lips swollen and his eyes dark in the shadow Kaidan made. Kaidan rocked forward, then rolled back.

He’d take his own t-shirt off. And then Shepard’s, if he had to. Shepard’s hands weren’t cold anymore, not even close, and the rest of him deserved the same treatment. Nobody else was gonna give it to him. Kaidan didn’t want anybody else to have to.

He was halfway out of his t-shirt when the door shook. Somebody was knocking.

At least he hadn’t forgotten to lock it.

‘Hey, guys,’ Mom said from the other side. ‘I brought up some snacks. I’d slide everything under the door like the two of you are my prisoners and I’m the cell warden, but that doesn’t seem friendly—or possible—so I left it outside.’

Kaidan looked down, blinking to focus without his glasses. Shepard was still watching him, from his hips to his chest; it was only after their eyes met and held that Shepard looked away.

Kaidan scrambled off him, tugging his t-shirt back on. ‘Uh, yeah, Mom,’ he said, caught in the sleeve, louder and more high-pitched than he wanted to be. He was out of breath. She’d know he was out of breath. ‘I’ll be right out to get it, thanks. Great, it sounds—really great.’

He hadn’t even gotten Shepard’s fly unbuttoned.

That pair of jeans might’ve been cursed.

‘Sorry,’ Kaidan said. ‘She just, uh…’

‘Snacks are cool,’ Shepard said, already off Kaidan’s bed and messing around with his model of the USS Enterprise. Normal stuff. The stuff they did before kissing each other for the first time, all the times after that, Shepard’s voice low on the phone and Kaidan touching himself, too eager, just listening to it. When they curled up together in the treehouse to wait out the rain and Kaidan’s dick pressed into Shepard’s ass, Kaidan palming between his legs, Shepard covering his hand, fingers slotting between Kaidan’s fingers and rolling after them, rolling his hips after them. Kaidan had squeezed his eyes shut tight, _tight_ , listening for the moment when everything changed. When Shepard came and Kaidan’s eyes opened wide, eyelashes tickling the back of Shepard’s neck.

‘Thanks,’ Shepard had mumbled, still somewhere else. Or…always somewhere else.

‘You’re welcome, Kaidan had replied, then spent weeks hating himself for it after. ‘I mean…yeah. You too. Shepard.’

Kaidan sighed and straightened out the mess of his hair. He grabbed his glasses and shoved them on and unlocked the door, sliding the tray inside with his foot.

Mom wasn’t in the hallway. There was granola and some organic apple-mango juice on the tray and between the granola and the juice there was a box of condoms.

‘Oh my God,’ Kaidan said.

He couldn’t stop it.

He should’ve pretended they weren’t there, stuffed them into the back of his closet with the Millennium Falcon, wrapped them up for Shepard for Christmas. _Surprise,_ the card would read. _Happy holidays. My mom thinks we’re having sex._

Or maybe he’d go simple, classic. _Better safe than sorry. Merry Christmas!_

‘Yeah,’ Shepard said, standing next to him. ‘…You don’t like the kind with the walnuts.’

Kaidan couldn’t look at him, didn’t want to know if his ears were pink or his eyes were blank, if he was reaching for his windbreaker already. Kaidan wouldn’t blame him if he did run—while he still could.

‘By the way,’ Mom called up from downstairs, ‘I was thinking we could order in tonight. And it’s no trouble getting extra, if Shepard wants to stay.’

The stereo system in the kitchen turned on, playing some slow, jazzy Madeleine Peyroux album Kaidan had been hearing since September. He shut the door. His t-shirt still had the wrinkles Shepard had left in it.

‘You don’t have to stay for dinner,’ Kaidan said. He didn’t know what to do with the condoms but they were still incredibly _there_. ‘If you don’t want to, I mean. But you could, if you did. I don’t think she’d talk about the… She really likes you, Shepard. We could get burgers or something. …We usually get Thai but it’s— You know, it’s pretty spicy.’

_Condoms_ , he thought. As long as he didn’t say it, it’d be okay.

‘Thai’s fine,’ Shepard said.

Kaidan would’ve given anything to know what he was thinking. Just…two seconds of it, even. Just one. It wouldn’t be enough, but it’d be something, and maybe with a hint or a clue, he could finally start on cracking the code.

‘Okay,’ Kaidan said. ‘That’s cool. I’ll get the menu online and I can tell Mom you’re staying.’

‘Okay,’ Shepard said.

They left the condoms where they were, nestled against the granola.

_Okay_ , Kaidan thought, only it wasn’t, and they weren’t going to talk about it, and the only thing Kaidan could hope for was that nobody would bring it up over Pad Thai and green curry and it’d all work out, like the wrinkles Shepard made in Kaidan’s t-shirt, which were already starting to smooth over.

*


	2. SHEPARD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Do or do not. There is no try.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long delay between chapters! This should, hopefully, be updated regularly from now on...real life completely got in the way!

Shepard never meant to say yes, but Mrs. Alenko had given them condoms with their granola, and duty or honor or the samurai code meant that he couldn’t leave Kaidan to face dinner alone after that.

Being there would probably only make it worse. Loyalty to the end usually wound up with ritual suicide and Shepard didn’t exactly have what anybody would call table manners.

He was good with chopsticks, though. Garrus liked to eat a bowl of rice grain by grain just to show it could be done and if Shepard hadn’t practiced the same technique, he would’ve died in his stir-fry from boredom years ago. Face down. One with the baby corn. Then he wouldn’t even have to slide it off the plate and onto Garrus’s; Garrus could just eat around Shepard’s corpse.

Kernel by kernel or something.

There were times when Shepard’s brain felt like it’d been stir fried and this was one of them—insides scrambled, skin warm, smelling like Kaidan, hair getting in his eyes. Every time he shoved it back it fell over them again; it wasn’t the same as being blind and more like being blind to some things specifically. Like in a dream, a bad one, the harder he tried to focus, the blurrier it became.

Shepard pushed his hair off his forehead anyway. For a second, he could see Kaidan without anything getting in the way. He was bending over his desk without sitting down, waiting for his laptop to come off sleep mode. Shepard saw his ass, his messy t-shirt, his skin—still flushed.

Shepard was a part of that. The flush was good; the messy shirt wasn’t. And Shepard knew that most of what he did was make Kaidan messy—like the raincoat he’d dropped on the floor because they were kissing, or his hair curling at the back because they were kissing, or the sneakers Shepard had kicked off because they were gonna start kissing.

The only things Shepard knew how to be careful with in this house were Kaidan’s model ships. If Shepard could’ve been lost in space and time on one of those things, trying to get back to earth for years, then he wouldn’t have to eat Thai food in the Alenkos’ dining room. On plates that weren’t paper or plastic. With wooden chopsticks, sticky rice that couldn’t be picked apart grain by grain. Across the table from Mrs. Alenko, who already knew everything.

She could really like him all she wanted to, but she still understood what Shepard had known all along. He wasn’t exactly good enough, or close to good enough, for somebody like Kaidan.

‘So, uh…’ Kaidan glanced back over his shoulder and Shepard pretended he hadn’t been staring at the soft, faded denim on his back pockets. ‘What kind of Thai food do you like?’

‘Noodles,’ Shepard said. Noodles were safe. They absorbed a lot of heat from peppers but they helped temper the heat, too. ‘…The big flat ones.’

Kaidan’s smile was so good it hurt. ‘Yeah, that’s… Pad Thai, right? That’s one of my favorites, too.’

‘Huh.’ Shepard’s hands were too big to fit in his pockets. They hung at his sides like they were carrying something heavy, but his fingers curved in to remind him they were empty. ‘Cool. Whatever else is fine. Rice is okay.’

‘The sticky stuff or fried? The coconut’s pretty good, too,’ Kaidan added, licking his bottom lip, glasses sliding down his nose.

They’d been on his bed what felt like seconds but also lifetimes ago. Whenever Shepard was with Kaidan he kind of felt like there was time travel involved, like he was stuck somewhere between the past and the future but not, actually, in the present.

They’d been on the bed together, heat and Kaidan’s hands cupping Shepard’s dick, and now they were standing with too much in the way of each other, like some big, stupid conversation about Thai food.

Shepard wasn’t even hungry. And after making out with Kaidan, he usually was, something that couldn’t be satisfied but he kept sneaking deli meat from Donnelly’s counter anyway.

‘Sorry,’ Kaidan said, face fixed on the screen. Shepard couldn’t see it, the angle too narrow to reflect the full expression. Twisty mouth, probably. Deep eyes. Cheeks a little pink, forehead doing the funny wrinkle between his heavy eyebrows, and this huge, invisible barrier settled in-between them. Shepard got the feeling that if he took a step forward he’d bounce off it, or it’d shock him, or throw him back through the wall. Or he’d start to fall and never stop falling, disappearing between two floorboards. Even his words couldn’t make it across. Shepard swallowed them down, deeper and deeper into his chest. ‘About the… Hey, do you like green curry or red curry better?’

‘Green,’ Shepard said. Red must’ve meant spicier. It was a question he could answer, one of the empty bubbles on a multiple choice test he knew he could fill in. ‘But whatever’s good, if you like red or something. It’s fine.’

‘Liara might’ve told her about us,’ Kaidan continued, over the sound of his mousewheel clicking as he scrolled through the menu. ‘Or…we’re being obvious. Mom knows a lot of stuff about me, and we’ve been spending a lot of time together, so…’

‘Yeah,’ Shepard said.

‘And she really likes you,’ Kaidan added. ‘Which is good, because I… I really like you, too.’

‘Yeah,’ Shepard said.

‘I’m gonna…put those somewhere.’ Kaidan nudged the laptop shut—he was always gentle with it, never slammed it down or left it open, even though those same hands had left little bruises on Shepard’s hip once—and moved toward the tray.

Shepard felt the walls come up again. It was a natural instinct, his brain trying to protect itself, regenerating the part that kept being destroyed by reality. He might’ve seen something like that in a movie once—but he wouldn’t have minded dealing with some retrograde amnesia for a while.

‘You don’t have to stay for dinner,’ Kaidan said. He was the one who reached down and picked up the box and Shepard didn’t know, with everything he’d learned from Garrus about the code of the samurai, if he’d’ve been able to do the same. ‘If it’s gonna be awkward, or… I don’t know.’

‘It’s cool.’ Shepard shrugged, licking his dry lips. His hair was in his eyes again and that meant he didn’t have to see the box.

He’d never said yes to dinner before. He’d only passed the dining room table once or twice.

‘Well…thanks.’ Kaidan was still holding it, between the trash and the desk. ‘For staying. The Thai place is really good. I guess I’ll go...tell my mom what we want. And give these back. And try not to kill her, so…’

‘See you soon,’ Shepard said.

‘Yeah,’ Kaidan replied.

He slipped out the door, the knob sliding back into place behind him. Nothing in the house ever creaked, no squeaky hinges or stuck windows or warped floorboards. Shepard stood in the middle of Kaidan’s room with his hands in his pockets, thumbs hooked over the corners. His chest was tight, like they were still making out, and he was spending more time on every breath Kaidan took than remembering to breathe for himself.

And Kaidan, with the box in his hand, had been the one to take it away—taking on the responsibility, even, like a soldier carrying a live grenade off the field. Sacrificing himself for the rest of his squad.

_Condoms_.

Shepard had always been waiting for Mrs. Alenko to kick him out of the house—not because she wasn’t cool but more because she _was_. They were on the same level; they both liked Kaidan a little too much, and it made sense that somebody’d who’d done such a good job with a guy would want to make sure nobody came along after and screwed him up.

Shepard’s palms were sweaty. He wiped them off on the fronts of his jeans until the rough swipes on rougher denim made his skin tingle.

He knew every corner of Kaidan’s room, especially the view from the bed. Sitting on the edge, lying on his back and staring at the closed skylight, or propped on one elbow looking out the glass balcony doors. He could tell anybody, eyes shut or even blindfolded, what color the walls were, the pillows, the comforter, the extra blanket folded at the bottom, how many pencils there were on the desk. Maybe not how many pairs of shoes there were in the closet—who’d bother counting that high?—but he could’ve rated Kaidan’s jeans from favorite to least favorite and listed his collection of soft sweaters. They weren’t itchy at all and they left Kaidan flushed and sweaty if he didn’t take them off _before_ he put his hands on Shepard’s chest and his tongue in Shepard’s mouth.

But there was no way Shepard knew what Kaidan and his mom were talking about downstairs, in one of all the rooms Shepard never spent any time in. The kitchen, the magnets on the fridge, the shopping list, the icemaker, the herb garden in the window planter, and the curtained door to the porch—Shepard knew that as well as he knew the shape of Kaidan’s lips when he was about to yawn but trying to hold back on it.

All he’d seen of Kaidan’s dad were a few pictures on the wall in the hallway, the few feet of it between Kaidan’s room and his bathroom. His mom was mostly a face that poked around a doorway or out a car window. She was somebody who let him borrow an umbrella when it was raining, somebody who had Kaidan’s eyes.

Thinking about holding out one of his sweaty hands to shake hers, or Mr. Alenko’s, was the worst joke anybody’d ever told in the history of the world. And that included everything that came out of Joker’s mouth, so that was really saying something.

_Condoms_. Shepard’s thoughts went somewhere else, somewhere crooked and dangerous, skewing left of _don’t think about it_ into a different kind of wall. Soft, not itchy, a crash landing into a pile of pillows or something. Deep, deep into the Kaidan zone.

Kaidan ripping one of the condoms open, both of them laughing—then, not laughing anymore. And the last whatever that stood between them getting peeled away as Kaidan hooked his fingers into his briefs and slid them down, from the small of his back and over the curve of his ass.

Shepard closed his eyes until he saw stars. When he opened them again, the skylight was still shut, and it was only starting to get dark out—no stars yet.

Sometime between the rain and the drying off and the making out and the condom stuff, the day—too short in the winter—was almost over. Shepard was going to have Thai food with Mrs. Alenko and Kaidan and the condoms in the room, the nice plates, the tablecloth.

It would’ve been easy to grab his half-dry windbreaker and his still-soaked hightops and let himself out of the room. Kaidan would understand, but his mouth would shift like he was holding back something more than a yawn, and Shepard couldn’t do it.

_Use the Force, Shepard,_ he told himself.

_Do or do not. There is no try._

Taking advice from Yoda was always hit or miss. But when Shepard thought it in Garrus’s voice, it seemed a lot easier to live by.

Still, he probably would’ve been happier with a blaster at his side, not that he could ever let Garrus know about that.

‘Hey,’ Kaidan said, sticking his head around the door. ‘Have you been standing there this whole time?’

Shepard shrugged.

Kaidan’s mouth twisted to one side, not holding anything back. ‘Okay, well… If you wanna come down, the food’s gonna be here any minute. And we won’t have to talk about the…stuff, so that’s not… It’s just gonna be dinner.’

‘Yeah,’ Shepard said, and let Kaidan lead the way down the stairs, none of them creaking under his gray drugstore socks.

*


	3. KAIDAN

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard clears the table.

Shepard never stayed for dinner—or at least, not the kind of dinner you had at a table, with silverware that wasn’t made of plastic, and actual napkins and plates.

Shepard never put a napkin in his lap, either, and Kaidan was pretty sure he hadn’t seen him eating rice grain by grain before.

‘So, you two got caught in the rain on your way back too, huh?’ Mom asked. ‘Hope you brought your raincoats.’

Kaidan took another bite of something spicy, heat hitting the back of his throat and clearing his head. Or burning his brains, but to be honest, he needed it.

‘Kaidan,’ Mom had told him, raising her eye at the box after he brought it down, ‘you’re allowed to stop being embarrassed by stuff when you’re thirteen. I’m pretty sure it was in one of those my body’s changing books I gave you back then.’

‘Well, I read them,’ Kaidan had replied, ‘and it wasn’t, and we’re not… I mean, we are, kind of, but we don’t need these right now, and if we did need them, I’d…figure something out.’

‘I like him, you know,’ Mom had said. ‘I really do. He’s a little weird, but then… So are you. In a _good_ way,’ she’d added, dialing the restaurant already. ‘Don’t worry. It’s not like I’m going to show sex-ed videos after dinner or take out the baby albums over dessert. I’d just…kind of like to get to know somebody my kid spends all his time with. Also, the flipped-up collar thing gives him away every time.’

She’d placed the order. Kaidan had stuffed the condoms into the linen closet, because throwing them away had been too permanent and keeping them had been too obvious. Then, he’d leaned against the banister before heading back upstairs, knowing Shepard would still be there but also not knowing it. Or not trusting it. Because he was an idiot sometimes about these things, _not_ in a good way.

But Shepard was still there when Kaidan opened the door, hair floppy in the front, hands stuck in his pockets, the kind of casual about everything that couldn’t even be reproduced in a magazine. Shepard looked like he’d just stepped off the pages and into real life and he didn’t even have to try, or own more than one pair of jeans, or wear socks that came in anything other than a ten-pack.

For a second—a long second, maybe even two—Kaidan felt like things were okay. And then the falling sensation started up again, where everything was way more than okay and way less than okay at the same time. The weird thing was, Kaidan was starting to be okay with that.

Shepard was staying for dinner. That had to mean something.

It wasn’t getting the zipper on his fly all the way down but it was progress, just enough each day to let Kaidan feel like he was gaining—instead of always losing—ground.

Kaidan thought about kissing Shepard before they went downstairs but he said something dumb instead, and Shepard pretended he hadn’t said something dumb, and they went downstairs not exactly together but almost together, which was what they were.

Together. Almost.

Progress. …Sometimes.

Thai food, spicy; Shepard, cute; Mom, condoms. Kaidan’s neurons had apparently broken down from the strain to the simplest possible expressions of fact beyond speculation, while the rest of him was devoted to overthinking everything else.

Like the napkin in Shepard’s lap and the single grain of rice thing he was still doing.

‘No, it’s really cool,’ Mom said. ‘Kind of like a Buddhist warrior monk in training. Personally, I’m fascinated.’

Shepard looked up, realizing she was talking about him.

One time, on their way back from a family vacation, Mom had almost hit a deer in the road. She’d stopped short, headlights blinding the thing, and she’d even gasped, the only time Kaidan heard her sound surprised by anything—but Kaidan remembered the way the deer looked as the real revelation: eyes round and wide, ears pricked forward. Trapped in these twin spotlights and more afraid of being seen than what came after.

Mom had shut the headlights off then so it could maintain the illusion of freedom but she didn’t have the same instinct now.

The metaphorical headlights were still on.

‘It’s, uh…’ Kaidan had never seen Shepard struggle before. He held the chopsticks steady but, exactly like that deer, he wasn’t moving when he spoke. ‘Just kind of this…thing.’

Mom’s lips twitched. ‘That’s fine. You know, Kaidan’s dad used to eat all the cookie dough out of our cookie dough ice cream when we first moved in together. I’d go to take some and there’d be all these holes in the vanilla. Honestly, I don’t think there’s a single person I like who doesn’t have one of those things.’

Kaidan took another bite of green curry tofu and wished that it’d choke him, to give them some common ground to work with.

‘Mom likes Star Wars,’ Kaidan added, managing to swallow without incident.

‘I like Han Solo,’ Mom said. ‘There’s a difference. Is this green curry _way_ too spicy or is it just me?’

While Mom fanned herself with a napkin, Kaidan tried to sneak a look at Shepard. He was eating the rice now like a normal person, more than one grain at a time, and his tofu was still on his plate, green curry swimming around it, bamboo shoots resting on top.

It took Kaidan a second to put it together. The first piece of the cipher; the first symbol he’d needed to start cracking the code.

Shepard didn’t like spicy food.

‘Yeah,’ Kaidan said. ‘I mean, it’s not just you. It’s really hot. Where’s the Pad Thai?’

He dished that out for himself and some more for Shepard, who finally went after it like a teenage boy—one who’d worked up some kind of appetite by jogging most of the way back home in the rain, then not eating the condom granola Mom’d sent up for an afternoon snack.

Mom was right. Kaidan _was_ weird. And Shepard was weird, too, and Kaidan had—kind of, or totally—rescued him from his weirdness by busting out the Pad Thai.

Saved by noodles.

Maybe good weird and bad weird were the same thing.

‘Ice cream?’ Mom asked, standing up to clear away the dishes, and Shepard got to his feet so fast he almost knocked his chair over.

‘I can get the plates,’ he said.

When he backed it up, Mom looked impressed, but Kaidan already knew Shepard didn’t just say things if he didn’t plan on some follow-through. He _did_ drop the forks off the stacked dishes on his way into the kitchen but Kaidan was there to grab them up, and to see the color on Shepard’s ears go from pale and freckled to pink.

‘Ice cream’s good,’ Kaidan said.

‘Sure,’ Shepard added. ‘…Thanks. Yeah. Yes.’

Kaidan got out the scoop and Mom got out the bowls and that left Shepard standing by the island, dirty dishes stacked together, between the dishwasher and the fridge.

He moved so much faster, so much easier, when it was just the two of them, when he was getting down off his motorcycle, climbing a tree, landing on Kaidan’s balcony. It was like he didn’t know about gravity or like the same rules everyone else lived by didn’t apply to him. Kaidan never saw him trip or bump into things, although there was that one time—the first night they kissed—when he’d almost dropped his chopsticks and actually spilled some pho on his shirt. But it was a total anomaly, the exception that proved the rule.

‘How many scoops?’ Kaidan asked, and Shepard’s shrug suddenly meant more than disinterest. It was confusion or uncertainty or just not knowing what to say, because he thought there was a right answer—or at least, he obviously thought there was a wrong one.

‘Two’s good,’ Kaidan told Mom.

‘Yeah,’ Shepard repeated, and, ‘thanks.’

Again.

‘Well, boys,’ Mom said, ‘that wasn’t so bad, was it? Nobody embarrassed themselves. Everybody knew how to use chopsticks. I’d say it was a success, except for that green curry. I think I’m just going to cross it off the menu so no one ever makes _that_ mistake again.’

Shepard held his ice cream bowl in both hands. It was toffee chip and Shepard still hadn’t touched his spoon, although Kaidan was already three bites in and getting the cold rush, teeth aching, tongue and lips so blue they were practically numb. ‘It wasn’t _that_ bad,’ Kaidan said.

He didn’t know if he meant the ice cream or the dinner.

‘I’ll leave it out so it doesn’t get too hard to scoop, how about that? And maybe we could do this again sometime, Shepard.’ Mom moved past Kaidan on her way to the living room; it was like she hadn’t dropped a bomb into their lives, like they were supposed to keep doing things the way they had been before but with a box of condoms in the linen closet, so basically things would never been the same again.

Shepard cleared his throat. It was almost another _yeah_ that realized how many had come before it and aborted mission right before launch.

‘Hey,’ Kaidan said. ‘You wanna go upstairs?’

Shepard, in his kitchen, loading the dishwasher and staying not just for dinner but for dessert. His ice cream was melting but he’d managed some spoonfuls, and after that it must’ve been good, because he polished the whole thing off and scraped up the soupy part with a slurp.

‘Sure,’ Shepard said.

He had toffee on his bottom lip.  

It was still awkward. It was still raining. Shepard’s socks had a not-quite hole in the heel, fabric worn so thin Kaidan could see the skin underneath, pink against gray. If Kaidan kissed him, then Mom would know about it—but Mom already knew about it, enough to think it was more than what it was, or that it was more than Kaidan thought, or…something.

 _Something_.

That was what Kaidan needed to do. He licked his lips and they tasted like toffee—or toffee chunks, since there was a difference.

‘Your Mom’s cool,’ Shepard said. ‘I didn’t know she liked Han.’

‘Yeah,’ Kaidan replied. ‘She is—she does.’

He scratched the back of his calf with his toe and put his bowl down on the table, the first time he’d ever done that before he was finished with the ice cream inside. He touched the front of Shepard’s t-shirt like it was any other midnight snack both of them thought they were being so sneaky about: pulse kicking up, the kitchen dark, the only light reflecting in Shepard’s eyes from the open fridge.

This was everything those nights weren’t. All the lights were on and Mom was in the living room watching the Food Network. And then, Kaidan was kissing Shepard in the kitchen until both of their cold mouths were warm again, Shepard’s tongue swiping after the ice cream off Kaidan’s bottom lip and Kaidan doing the same thing after. Just more thorough, because that was how things always worked.

‘We should go upstairs,’ Kaidan said.

If Mom asked, he’d tell her he was the one who forgot about the bowl, not Shepard. Shepard put his in the sink, with a clatter of the spoon that made Kaidan see all the wrinkles in Shepard’s t-shirt, the way the bottom hem was fraying.

They shut the overhead light off as they headed out. The same step Shepard had made creak on the way down was the one Kaidan leaned on too hard on the way up. Inside Kaidan’s bedroom it didn’t feel as private as before, but Kaidan locked the door anyway, leaning against it, his hand still wrapped around the knob.

Shepard might’ve kissed him any other day, but right now he was stuck in place, standing in the middle of the room, not making a single move.

Kaidan still had to do something.

‘Hey,’ Kaidan said, softer than he wanted, and breathless—like they’d only just been running home in the rain. Like they were always going to be running away from or to each other but mostly into each other. The idea of there only being three stupid choices made Kaidan’s throat close up. It made him cross over to Shepard and wrap his arms around his waist and get up onto his toes, kissing him again, but it wasn’t about what was on Shepard’s skin that mattered—it was about everything inside, Shepard’s heart hammering against his ribs, Kaidan’s stomach swelling against Shepard’s when they both breathed in and forgot to let it out.

Kaidan’s fingers knotted in Shepard’s t-shirt and when Shepard finally, _finally_ rested his hands against the small of Kaidan’s back, Kaidan let go—to take them, to move them lower, over the twin shapes of his pockets.

‘I’m glad she knows,’ Kaidan said. He kissed the corner of Shepard’s mouth. ‘It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything. I’m just… I’m glad.’

His words slurred against Shepard’s chin and over his cheek and jaw, to his throat, under his ear, biting the lobe. He sucked on it and Shepard hiccupped this weird, choked gasp that didn’t sound like anything, that meant everything. Kaidan wanted him, really, _really_ badly, his dick hard and his own heartbeat matching Shepard’s the same way as, sometimes, when they were lying together, he tried to make the in and out of his breathing match the rise and fall of Shepard’s chest.

It never actually worked, and it made breathing feel unnatural. How many times had heard the phrase _as easy as breathing_? It was supposed to be simple, so simple that everybody else took it for granted, but when you liked someone like Shepard, it just…wasn’t.

Kaidan couldn’t.

He sucked in a breath and sucked Shepard’s bottom lip along with it. His teeth scraped the skin and Kaidan realized how soft it was, how vulnerable. The sweet part was the ice cream’s fault and all that was fading away. There was peanut sauce and coconut underneath and not all of it made sense together; not all of it had to.

‘It doesn’t have to be weird,’ Kaidan said. He was just babbling now, in between the other stuff his mouth was doing that was, admittedly, better than talking. Shepard’s hips bumping his; the friction he couldn’t ever get on his own, however hard he tried, however close Shepard’s voice took him. ‘I know I’m being weird but weird…can be good. You’re weird. I’m weird. We can be weird together. …I don’t even know what weird means anymore.’

‘Okay,’ Shepard said. ‘Okay.’

_Yeah._

His fingers worked under the hems of Kaidan’s pockets but Kaidan was sick, so sick, of there always being something left to do and something left in between. Even Mom thought they were a lot farther along in this whatever-they-were than they’d come and it never seemed like it was anything other than too slow _and_ too fast at the same time. Shepard was a contradiction. He made Kaidan contradict himself. He made ‘as easy as breathing’ into ‘as hard as Kaidan’ and Kaidan was…really hard.

So was Shepard, though.

And weird.

And they were together.

They’d been on three actual dates.

Kaidan said ‘Shepard,’ then pulled back, and Shepard looked like that deer again, stuck in the headlights, stuck in place like Kaidan was stuck on him.

It was a lot to see all in one frame. Kaidan took off his glasses with one hand and he touched Shepard’s chest again, with enough pressure that Shepard took a step backwards, then another. His calf hit the edge of the bed. It made a sound so soft that Kaidan almost didn’t hear it over the sound of his own pulse jumping in his temple.

‘Okay,’ Kaidan agreed. ‘Just… Just sit down for a second.’

Shepard’s knees folded like it’d always been that easy—and the mattress and the comforter made another soft sound, a sigh, against his weight. He was light. His knees were splayed open. The button on his fly and the zipper were both right there and it was just that simple. It had to be that simple.

Kaidan got down on his knees, steadying himself with one hand on the inside of Shepard’s thigh, the center of his palm brushing the seam of his jeans. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, toes curled up underneath him, but he put his cheek where his hand had been and felt Shepard tremble.

Shepard had skinny legs. His knees were all bony. His jeans still smelled like the rain and Kaidan pulled back.

He was lucky the lights weren’t on in his room, not even the halogen lamp on the desk. Some things had to start in the darkness and work their way up to being seen, even if the moonlight came out now and then and tried to speed up the process.

The skylight was shut. There was nobody to see them. A siren rolled by in the distance, the sound it made warping and distorting and changing as it traveled. Quiet to loud to quiet again.

Kaidan unzipped Shepard’s jeans after popping open his fly and rolled Shepard’s t-shirt up over his belly to kiss his stomach. It was hairy, but not as hairy as Kaidan’s, and the hair was soft, the skin soft, twitching and jumping under Kaidan’s mouth.

Shepard didn’t say anything. He squeezed the edge of the mattress, knuckles white; Kaidan could see the dips in the blanket where he was holding on. He patted Shepard’s stomach, uselessly reassuring, like he knew what he was doing—which he did, but only in theory, diagrams in his head like geometrical shapes, and algebra had always been more his thing than geometry. Shapes never fit for him exactly the way they were supposed to, and now his mouth was over the elastic on Shepard’s boxers, simple white and looking gray.

Kaidan licked his lips. The tip of his tongue bumped the damp cotton.

‘Oh,’ he said, his hot breath caught on the fabric.

Shepard’s whole body shuddered. ‘Yeah,’ he replied.

 _Yeah_.

The word was different. Kaidan had changed it, not Shepard, not Mom with her condoms, not a shift in the weather he couldn’t control.

‘Kaidan—’ Shepard began, but Kaidan heard his voice turn into fractals, this shivering, shattering sound that Kaidan wouldn’t be able to quantify _or_ qualify, much less explain.

His mouth was so, so close to Shepard’s dick. There was still that last stretch of cotton and Kaidan looped his fingers under the elastic, just the tips, without pulling it down yet.

‘Yeah,’ Kaidan agreed, and the word carried him forward.

He wasn’t expecting it to taste like ice cream. And it didn’t, and he wasn’t surprised. Not even at himself. Not even that the zipper was all the way down and the front of Shepard’s jeans was pushed all the way open and Kaidan’s mouth was over his dick, through his boxers, slanting over the head, leaving the fabric as damp on the outside as it was on the inside.

It was embarrassing. It was pretty great, too. Kaidan’s cheeks were pink and his hair was curling at the back; he could feel it. Mostly he could feel Shepard’s thighs tightening, pressing against his ears, trembling because they were trying not to. Kaidan’s lips parted and slid and it was the weirdest thing in the life of a weird person. Good weird, though.

Now, he actually knew the difference.

*


	4. SHEPARD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is art in this chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Semi-nsfw; by Stonelions!

Shepard never knew what was going on in Kaidan’s head. Sometimes, he knew what was going on in his chest, in his gut, from the way his mouth twisted or his eyebrows got pinchy in the middle, but the head…

It was like the Dark Side of the Force, only not necessarily bad. Just…endless, always there, more powerful than anybody knew.

The thing was, Kaidan had a lot of Midi-chlorians.

_Thanks for dinner, Mrs. Alenko_ , Shepard thought, words echoing between his ears with his pulse. _Kaidan has a lot of Midi-chlorians. Sorry about breaking that cup in the dishwasher. And proving you right about the…thing with the condoms._

But that was before, when thought was possible—when Shepard’s brain hadn’t been fried and spaced by Kaidan’s mouth on his dick.

Part of him—the twitchy fingers part—wanted, without words, to reach out and touch Kaidan’s hair, run his hands through the sweaty, curly spot at the back, and get him to shiver when his nails pushed along Kaidan’s scalp. He liked that, better than he wanted to admit, because it messed up the style. But all movement, all action, even all instinct, had melted like the last of Kaidan’s ice cream in the bowl.

The thing about Kaidan having so many Midi-chlorians was that being near him made every Midi-chlorian Shepard had in his cells start to sing, opening up the Force even to the people who’d never had enough of a count to connect with it on their own.

Shepard was Han and Kaidan was Leia—better, smarter, _way_ more Jedi. Dumb luck, decent aim, and a best friend who could probably tear people’s heads off… That was all Shepard had going for him. He didn’t even have a ship, although he _did_ have a motorcycle, the muscles in his thighs rumbling like the engine when she was almost out of gas. Deep, guttering, groaning, Shepard making a sound he wished he hadn’t, head tipping back; Kaidan’s mouth opening over the head of his dick, cotton and heat and the way it’d looked—when Shepard could still look—with his flushed cheeks and his spreading lips and his hand, squeezing the inside of Shepard’s thigh, knuckles rubbing his hip, thumb skirting around his navel and making every last hair stand on end while it shivered.

But Shepard couldn’t stop making that noise; it was what breathing sounded like now and maybe forever, clutching the sheets instead of Kaidan’s hair, bunching it up under his fingers, nails raking across the fabric, the bed too soft and his dick too hard.

Like every stupid half-awake dream he’d had in the shower in the early morning, when he was opening during the summer, when he was juggling two jobs to fix up the Normandy and take Kaidan to the movies and buy him those big, stupid coffee drinks with the fancy names he liked so much. So that Kaidan wasn’t the only one who paid for dinner and brought all the snacks and fished his wallet out of his back pocket to buy the popcorn.

Things had to be fair.

Things had to be even.

Only they weren’t, because Kaidan was the one on his knees when Shepard always thought he’d be the one down there forever. It felt good, looking up at Kaidan even though Kaidan was shorter, standing beneath somebody’s balcony and knowing how to start climbing. Those few seconds, or minutes, or whatever, that a guy took for himself to remember how things started, how high he had to aim. And then doing it, over and over, until the blisters on his palms had healed into calluses.

Somebody up there was expecting him.

Shepard knew it the second his head went blank, like the Normandy’s engine cutting out, a wire slipping free from where it was supposed to be hooked up. A small thing could ruin a big connection. Shepard slipped back onto his elbows, stomach swelling and sinking with each breath, all that pulling himself up turning into falling, falling down, falling down hard, Kaidan’s fingers at his balls, sweat on his stomach and back, sweat on Kaidan’s neck, palms kneading and rolling and cupping and Shepard totally gone already, gone from the start, becoming one with Kaidan’s Midi-chlorians. _His_ Force.

Yeah.

Shepard would’ve made the worst Jedi ever.

He came inside his boxers, which wasn’t a new thing at all; Kaidan’s mouth on him while it happened _was_ new and Shepard couldn’t think but he also couldn’t think about it specifically, Kaidan’s chin bumping his balls, Kaidan’s teeth scraping the head, Kaidan pulling back and settling on his knees and trying to catch his breath.

Shepard wasn’t even trying. Breathing didn’t matter. His chest was lighter but still fuller than it’d ever been. He needed to keep from messing things up. He’d already made a mess and what came after this—what came next—couldn’t be cleared away from the dinner table, picked up from the floor if Shepard dropped it, loaded into the dishwasher and set overnight.

If life was like the Alenkos’ kitchen, Shepard wouldn’t have known how to climb trees.

His brain wasn’t making any sense.

Kaidan was still between his legs. He was kissing Shepard’s stomach again, rubbing his nose against it, and Shepard couldn’t close his eyes because he owed that much to both of them. Watching. Feeling. Vision starting to blur—or maybe starting to refocus.

‘Are you…’ Kaidan’s voice hummed along Shepard’s skin, which wouldn’t stop jumping at the thought, much less the touch, of his lips. ‘…was that…?’

‘Yeah,’ Shepard managed. He meant yeah, he meant _yeah_ , and everything else that came along with the word. Oh yeah. Hell yeah. Fuck yeah.

_Yeah, Kaidan_.

But it came out as yeah, one word. Alone, even though Kaidan’s lips were right there.

‘Yeah,’ Kaidan repeated. Shepard felt it and heard it at the same time. ‘…Okay. Cool.’

_Hot_.

‘Thanks,’ Shepard added, like this was dinner. Like it was something Kaidan had ordered and paid for. Like it was ice cream for dessert, an umbrella when it was raining, a sweater when it was cold. A sleeping bag to spend the night in because Shepard hadn’t brought one of his own. Kaidan saying ‘I got it’ when the check came and the tight little ball in Shepard’s stomach that wasn’t about the way he looked when he stood, the view of his back and his ass from behind, or how his t-shirt rode up when he was on his side on the bed, Shepard pushing his hands underneath it.

‘Uh…’ Kaidan’s voice—it was shaky. It held, but Shepard could finally hear it slipping, spinning out of place. ‘You’re welcome. I guess.’

_Dumb_. The first word that came back to Shepard was that, followed by _dumbass_.

Who the hell told somebody thanks after something like that?

Shepard needed to reach out to him, touch his face, feel the heat in his cheek, shape his bottom lip from the center to the corner and show him…something. Anything or everything—but not nothing. _Thanks_ was more an everything kind of reaction, anyway. _Thanks for everything. You are everything. I think I might be dying; never thought it’d be this awesome to do that._

_You know, you should try it sometime._

He had to stay cool. ‘Cool,’ Kaidan had said, and Shepard’s hair was sticking to his forehead. His boxers were sticky with cum. He needed to go to the bathroom and try to get cleaned up without getting one of the big white towels dirty.

‘Shepard,’ Kaidan said.

It was closer to a question.

_You’re such a Jedi master,_ Shepard thought. But it wasn’t like he could say that out loud.

‘I should go,’ Shepard said instead. Time, space, this continuum they were stuck on—it came out unplanned and then Shepard couldn’t take it back. He had to follow through with it.

The difference between that and what Kaidan had done—what he couldn’t undo—was that he’d gone for it and Shepard was going.

He didn’t want to, but it wasn’t like he could stay. Not with Mrs. Alenko and the condoms and the bowl of half-finished ice cream and all the silverware he’d dropped. He’d eaten rice the Garrus Vakarian style at dinner and he was still hungry, and Kaidan had pushed him back onto the bed, sucked him off like it was no big deal, like the things that were hard for other people were the things he could make seem easy.

He’d just _done_ it.

He was actually amazing, too amazing to look at or be in the same room with. Suddenly, with all the experience they had, all the practice, Shepard had no idea how to kiss him.

‘Oh,’ Kaidan said.

Shepard knew the sound of something deflating—like a punctured bike tire—by heart. Kaidan’s eyes were big and brown and he was still on the floor. Shepard’s hands were empty, fingers too long, elbows too sharp, legs too skinny, chest too tight. He had cum in his boxers. If his boxers hadn’t been there, it would’ve been on Kaidan’s mouth.

Kaidan’s lips, which Shepard always wanted to kiss. Kaidan’s life, which Shepard never pictured himself being a part of.

‘Yeah,’ Kaidan added. ‘It got pretty late.’

It wasn’t that Shepard was addicted to the force of Kaidan’s Midi-chlorians. They weren’t ever going to be his and he knew that—but, at the same time, he couldn’t afford to lose them. He zipped up his jeans and the sound it made covered whatever sound Kaidan made, biting his lower lip to quiet it for both of them.

Shepard made a grab for his windbreaker and caught his shin on the corner of the bed frame but he didn’t really feel it, or didn’t care if he did. It was still raining, pattering softly against the glass, when Shepard rolled the balcony door open. Cold air hit his hot skin, wind twisting his hair off his forehead.

That was probably what it was like to have somebody’s cool hand resting there when you were a little kid with a fever.

Shepard didn’t know.

He didn’t know a lot of things—like what Kaidan looked like in this single important moment, whether he’d stood or stayed there on the floor, on his knees, looking up at Shepard when he should’ve been looking down at him.

Over him on the bed, rocking his hips forward, hands braced above Shepard’s shoulders and Shepard existing underneath his body.  

Shepard squared his shoulders and didn’t bother with pulling the windbreaker’s hood over his head. There was water on his face but he needed that.

This was totally wrong. Shepard was all wet again and he couldn’t do it; he couldn’t leave. He turned around instead and Kaidan was standing, hand on his desk chair, face hidden because the skylight wasn’t open.

‘I can’t stay,’ Shepard said. He swallowed. ‘…You know. _Condoms_.’

‘Yeah.’ Kaidan’s voice didn’t sound like he had no air in his chest anymore, at least. ‘I know. It really is late.’

Shepard pushed his hair out of his face. It was wet—the rain, the sweat. His legs felt like they were made out of those floppy pool noodles from when Shepard was a lifeguard last summer, in between shifts at Thrifty’s.

‘But, I mean, you _could_ stay,’ Kaidan added. ‘If you wanted. I could tell Mom I’m bringing up the sleeping bag and we could leave the door open or…something. It’s nasty out there, and…’ Kaidan, at a loss for words. Probably because Shepard had ruined them just like he was ruining this. They could’ve been zipped up in his jeans, stuck to his skin with sweat and the other stuff, the last of their kisses inside Kaidan’s mouth with the ice cream. ‘I could get you some sweats,’ Kaidan finished finally. He kept finding what he needed to say and Shepard kept forgetting the sound of his own voice.

‘I guess I’m gonna need another towel,’ he said.

‘You need a raincoat,’ Kaidan replied. Shepard saw his shoulders pinch up in a wince. ‘…Maybe. I mean, if you wanted one.’

Shepard stepped back into Kaidan’s bedroom, where it smelled like clean laundry, without rolling the door shut behind him. His shoes had never dried out all the way. It didn’t matter that they were wet again, except that he was leaving damp footprints on the floor.

He hadn’t done anything—for Kaidan. He’d just taken what Kaidan gave him and then he’d tried to leave.

That blew.

And not… Not like Kaidan had blown things, either.

Shepard’s mind, for one thing. Not to mention Shepard’s dick.

‘I’m gonna get you wet,’ Shepard told him. And the rug. And the floor, the long angle it took to cross from the open balcony door to Kaidan’s spot in the middle of the room, to touch him with wet hands, to leave handprints on his sweater, against the rustling of Shepard’s windbreaker and the rush of the rain on the leaves.

‘Yeah,’ Kaidan agreed. It didn’t matter anymore because it had happened already. Shepard pushed his fingers under Kaidan’s sweater where the skin was flushed, too warm, hot from what he’d done—just like Shepard was hot. Even the rain couldn’t help cool him down and Shepard’s cold lips just heated up when they were on Kaidan’s.

‘I can sleep in the basement,’ Shepard said.

‘You don’t have to sleep in the basement,’ Kaidan replied, making no move to pull away. ‘I’ll get the sleeping bag. I’ll tell Mom you’re staying so it won’t be a surprise. A… A condom surprise.’

Shepard’s mouth twitched and Kaidan covered it up with his mouth until it stopped, until it relaxed and opened, until the swift, deep thrusts of Kaidan’s tongue past Shepard’s teeth reminded him of the way Kaidan had pressed his face against Shepard’s boxers.

Shepard squeezed his eyes shut. He never did that. When he opened them Kaidan was still there, rumpled, wet sweater and everything, bunched over Shepard’s wrists.

And Shepard touched him. Swooping around to the small of his back, knuckles along each vertebra of his spine, not going too high so he could double back and go low. Lower. Even lower than that. Tugging the waistband of Kaidan’s jeans along with his hands and tugging it too tight, which made Kaidan lose his breath in a sudden almost-gasp.

Air skirted Shepard’s chin and jaw where the rain had fallen. He still didn’t feel cold, or like he’d ever feel cold again. He was close, really close, to Kaidan’s ass, palming over it, sliding between Kaidan’s thighs from the back, rocking him forward until his hips made contact. Jeans on jeans; Kaidan’s briefs, Shepard’s boxers. Kaidan was hard—still or again; Shepard knew the difference was important but that didn’t mean he knew which was which.

Up was always down in the Alenko world. Snacks were always full meals and at full meals Shepard ate like he only wanted snacks. Lifting his rice grain by grain, not even understanding why he was doing it, himself.

Shepard squeezed, tightening his hands. He needed to get a grip but that wasn’t about to happen, not with Kaidan breathing against him, Kaidan’s chest on his chest, Kaidan’s stomach on his stomach, Kaidan’s hips grinding against Shepard’s thigh.

It wasn’t the same, not a perfect reflection or an equal but opposing force. It wasn’t Shepard kissing his chest to his belly to his hips, the dark hair and the soft skin, rolling his mouth over the cotton to that damp spot he’d felt with his hands before but hadn’t tasted and only sort of knew how to appreciate.

Kaidan pushed back into Shepard’s hands. Shepard pushed Kaidan forward into his arms. They needed to work at it from opposite sides—because opposites were supposed to attract, and Shepard actually liked that one science lesson they’d spent on magnetism. It just made sense, or he wanted it to make sense, the idea that two different things could be drawn to each other, more than two things that were the same.

If magnets didn’t work that way, then Kaidan would’ve been with Liara or somebody else like Liara, and Shepard would’ve been making out with Garrus.

Shepard laughed. The thought was stupid and Shepard wasn’t stupid—he just didn’t turn in his half-finished homework most of the time. But Kaidan made him feel stupid, smart enough to know how stupid he was getting and not smart enough to stop it.

Shepard squeezed again. Kaidan rolled down into the muscle on Shepard’s thigh instead of pushing up against it. Shepard should’ve unzipped his fly, rolled his jeans over his ass. Shepard should’ve turned him around and rubbed between his legs, gripping him with fingers and a palm and no briefs in between, just Shepard’s skin on Kaidan’s skin, the slit at the tip of his dick already sticky with cum.

When Shepard was alone, he’d push his thumb into that slit and close his eyes and forget the noise, the sirens outside the window, the thump of Jack’s music and the rattling of Grunt’s snores. And he could do the same for Kaidan—help him to forget the rain and the way Shepard acted like an idiot at dinner, the holes in his socks and his shoes, the fact that he never wore a raincoat.

There was no way he fit—into the sweats that Kaidan let him borrow _or_ into the dining room with furniture Shepard couldn’t name. But his palms fit against the curve of Kaidan’s ass, so well that Kaidan kept pushing between them and Shepard’s hips, until he went jerky and hid his face and glasses against Shepard’s throat, streaking up the lenses with rainwater and sweat.

The freckle was still there on the side of Shepard’s neck. The first hickey Kaidan ever gave him was long gone. Those first moves, though…

Kaidan always went for it.

Shepard could pull off a thousand and one dumbass things on a motorcycle—even more when it came to a regular bike—but he still couldn’t pull off Kaidan’s jeans.

Kaidan’s body eased up. His cheeks were hot; Shepard could tell. His own ears were hot, too, and the insides of Kaidan’s thighs, the sweaty denim, the soft sweater with a thick enough knit that Shepard could feel each stitch through the front of his t-shirt.

‘Guess I got you wet,’ Shepard said.

‘Thanks,’ Kaidan replied, the twist in his voice muffled by Shepard’s skin and pulse.

‘Yeah,’ Shepard said. ‘You’re welcome. Anytime.’

Kaidan stayed where he was for a while, his toes bumping the hole in Shepard’s left hightop, so that Shepard could feel it tickling his skin through the sock.

‘I’ll get the towels,’ Shepard said finally. ‘…I’ll be stealth about it.’

‘Han Solo doesn’t do stealth.’ Kaidan wasn’t letting go. ‘But…he gets away with it anyway.’

‘Yeah,’ Shepard agreed.

He could’ve stood there forever but the thing was… Kaidan couldn’t. And Han Solo would’ve known that, Jedi Master or not. Sometimes all you needed to help save the galaxy was a guy with a blaster willing to do dumb things for people who were smarter, better, more talented than he was. Because none of them was crazy enough to drive a trusty hunk of junk at hyperspeed, or kiss a princess when the rebel base was collapsing.

‘…You’re thinking about Star Wars,’ Kaidan said. ‘Aren’t you?’

Shepard tugged away, keeping his grin to the shadows.

At least he could believe Mrs. Alenko really liked Han, even if it was harder to believe she really liked him.

*


	5. KAIDAN

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard never.

Shepard never stayed.

That was the one rule Kaidan could always trust wouldn’t be broken. It was the one thing about Shepard that he understood—because they were still pretty young and the idea of waking up next to Shepard after a whole night instead of an hour-long nap was crazy.

Maybe not as crazy as Shepard eating dinner in the dining room, grain of rice by grain of rice.

One day, Kaidan told himself, it was all going to be funny. It was already worth it; now they just needed the perspective to see why it didn’t have to be the end of everything, at least not every time.

Even if, sometimes, Shepard saying he should go… It felt like the end was right on them like a deadline.

Kaidan took a deep breath, alone in his room. He knew he needed to go to the balcony door and roll it shut because the entire room was freezing, but he wanted it to be cold, so that Shepard could warm, so that Kaidan could tell the difference between having him there and not having him there.

He went to the closet first and got his sleeping bag out, but it was stupid—stupid that Shepard would have to sleep on the floor when Kaidan and Kaidan’s bed were right there. That somebody knowing and not even minding was _still_ enough to slow things down, to zip Shepard’s jeans back up.

Kaidan held onto the sleeping bag, sticky briefs needing to be changed, and grabbed his iPhone off his desk.

 _I think I just screwed up_ , he wrote. Then, he hit send.

Liara would still be up. She didn’t need as much sleep as normal people or just…everybody else. She said it was a waste of time and anyway, she’d trained herself—like Leonardo da Vinci—to get what she needed with a few naps every day, resetting her rhythm to what it was meant to be evolutionarily.

 _Probably shouldn’t have sent that,_ Kaidan added. _Sorry. Don’t worry. Shepard Stuff._

The phone buzzed with a new message right as he hit send on the second text.

 _Shepard Stuff?_ Liara’s reply said.

They’d probably typed it at the exact same time.

Kaidan had grown up with her. He’d known her during the summer she had corrective braces, so no matter how many crazy Shepard Stuff messages he sent her now that she knew about them, she let him. Patient, interested, but probably filing it with mental notes every step of the way.

Kaidan really didn’t want to know about her diagnosis of what it all meant.

He was crazy; he was crazy when it came to Shepard; it was like a test that he never finished, more and more pages to turn, empty bubbles to fill in, essays to write based on vague questions and none of the examples he’d studied fitting perfectly into the framework of the guy he was working with.

 _Great minds_ , Liara’s next text said.

 _Mom thinks we’re having sex,_ Kaidan wrote back.

 _You’re not?_ Liara’s came with a winky face. _;)_ _Just kidding. Still, I think too much emphasis is placed on a standardized sexual formula that should be more of a spectrum, if anything._

Her next text added, _It seems you’re exploring a lot of the spectrum, though. Are you all right?_

 _Yeah._ Kaidan stared at the word, the blinking cursor, for longer than he needed to, listening to the water running in the bathroom. He stepped closer to the wall, between his desk and his bed, leaning against it. Hearing just enough to know he wasn’t hearing much of anything. _I’m OK,_ he added. _I did some stuff and Mom gave us condoms and we had dinner together after that, three of us. It was good weird._

 _Good weird is the best,_ Liara’s reply said.

_That’s what Mom said._

_You want to talk about it?_

The water in the bathroom shut off. Kaidan wanted to think about Shepard in the shower, washing up, drying off, wrapped in one of the towels he liked so much, skin pink from where he’d been scrubbing it, his skinny legs and his tight muscles. His ass, which was pretty nice; his arms, which were even nicer; that lean stretch of his sides into his hips, slanted over the bone, grooves practically meant for Kaidan’s fingers to settle on. Kaidan had put his mouth there earlier and he licked his lips now, imagining Shepard totally naked in his shower, boxers crumpled on the floor.

 _I don’t know,_ Kaidan wrote back. _Maybe later. Thanks, Liara._

_Of course. Seeing other people overthink things is the best way to avoid overthinking them, yourself. Thanks for the sanity check, Kaidan._

Kaidan almost laughed but it hiccupped, sticking in his throat. He heard the water go on again, then off, and he had to hustle to the balcony to close the door before Shepard came in with his hair still wet and a towel in his hands. ‘You wanna, uh…’ He nodded to the door behind him.

‘I’ll go clean up,’ Kaidan said. ‘Yeah.’

They switched off, Kaidan handing Shepard the sleeping bag, Shepard handing Kaidan the towel. Kaidan got the crazy idea to take his clothes off right there, but he’d done enough for one night. Bravery was like blood; if you spilled enough, you’d get it back eventually, only the more you lost the harder it was to replenish naturally.

Kaidan had spilled a lot of bravery in his room that night. He’d let it all come out between Shepard’s legs. He undressed in the bathroom instead of with Shepard’s eyes on him and washed up, then put on a new pair of briefs and the sweats he always wore to bed.

Shepard had changed into the extra pair of sweatpants while Kaidan was gone—but his sleeping bag was still rolled up, sitting in Kaidan’s chair.

Revelations with Shepard came and went, kind of like sunny spots during a Vancouver summer. It could be clear skies one hour and rainy the rest of the day, depending on how fast the clouds rolled in. Kaidan could live with that kind of weather; he’d lived with it all his life.

He would’ve said Shepard was Vancouver, this literal embodiment of a place that Kaidan was a part of and that was a part of Kaidan.

But that was way too term paper, even for him.

Mostly, Kaidan felt tired. Worn out from coming on Shepard’s leg, from the whole long day and the rest of the long night.

‘I’m gonna lie down,’ he said.

Shepard nodded.

‘And it’s kind of cold in here now,’ Kaidan said. ‘With the balcony door staying open.’

Shepard pushed his damp hair, messy all over from rubbing it down with a towel, off his forehead. There were goosebumps on his arms and Kaidan got the feeling he’d never, ever say anything about them. It wasn’t that he didn’t get cold or that he didn’t need someone to warm him up.

It was that Shepard never talked about it.

‘I’m cold,’ Kaidan said. ‘…Shepard.’

He moved away and headed for his bed. The farther he got from Shepard the colder her felt, but he didn’t need a cold room to feel that way all the time. Shepard took a step after him; he didn’t veer off suddenly and grab the sleeping bag or settle down on the floor for the night—like it was still the summer and they were still on the phone and Kaidan had no way to tell the difference between turned on and sleepy in Shepard’s voice.

Shepard sat on the edge of the bed next to him. Kaidan scooted backwards onto it, towards his pillows. They’d done this a lot of times but always on top of the blankets, so there was no precedent set for how to get under them. Elbows knocked into elbows but the world didn’t end. There was no flaming crash or hyperspeed or meteor showers, just a couple of close calls, which as far as Kaidan was concerned were better than not being close enough.

If it had to be one. If the gravity was always going to be unpredictable, instead of measured by solid scientific rules.

Sweatpants brushing sweatpants. Shepard’s nose brushing Kaidan’s ear. One of the tree branches brushing the railing of the balcony outside.

Kaidan could feel Shepard’s cold, skinny arms, hard muscle and hard bone, under the comforter. He could feel how stiff Shepard was but also how he was starting to ease up. Kaidan pushed his mouth against Shepard’s cheek and realized he still had his glasses on, but Shepard was one step ahead of him.

That happened a lot.

‘Hey—I got it,’ Shepard said, wriggling an arm free. He took Kaidan’s glasses off and leaned over him to put them on the bedside table, between a lamp and a paperweight Dad had brought him all the way from Cambridge a couple of Christmases back. Kaidan didn’t have any paper to weigh down, but it was part of the room; it might as well have come with the table.

Shepard started to roll back onto another side of the bed but Kaidan snaked an arm underneath him, gripping the waistband of his borrowed sweats and holding him in place. Shepard stiffened up again, then softened, his face somewhere near Kaidan’s throat.

A couple of seconds later, maybe less, Kaidan felt them—careful kisses on his pulse, Shepard’s breath coming in uneven bursts. It reminded Kaidan of being drunk, of late-night Pho in a twenty-four hour place with bad music playing, two cops wondering what the hell they were doing, Kaidan’s face as hot as the broth in the bowl.

He was hot now, too. He could be cold and hot at the same time, just like Shepard.

‘I’m…’ Kaidan swallowed and it bobbed against Shepard’s lips. ‘I’m probably gonna do that again, Shepard. The… With my mouth. If you want me too, I mean. I’m gonna have to practice if I want to get good at it.’

‘You were good at it,’ Shepard replied.

Kaidan licked his lips. ‘Maybe more than good, then.’

Shepard licked Kaidan’s throat—maybe he meant to lick his lips, too, but there wasn’t enough space for it to happen without some kind of contact. ‘Guess you’ll have to teach me about it, then.’

Heat coiled and pitted in Kaidan’s stomach. He grinned at the skylight above him and he didn’t have to see the stars to know they were basically grinning back. Grinning, burning… With Shepard, there was no difference.

‘Yeah,’ Kaidan said. ‘It’ll be like studying together.’ That sounded lamer than he meant it to. ‘Just…more fun than that. Hopefully.’

Shepard’s tongue on his throat reminded him of the reason why it mattered, a shiver that started at the base of his spine and ended up all the way at the tips of his toes.

Finally—it felt like years since it’d started—Shepard snaked an arm over Kaidan’s stomach, tugging at the corner of Kaidan’s pillow. The weight wasn’t necessarily comfortable but it didn’t have to be or, if it had been, it wouldn’t’ve felt as good as it did.

Weird-good.

And scary-good.

And good-good, even.

‘I had a good time tonight,’ Shepard said. Then, after a pause, he added, ‘So…what are you wearing?’

They weren’t on the phone anymore. Kaidan’s t-shirt was riding up because of Shepard’s arm, not his own hands pushing it higher while he worked his way down his body to his dick, hard from the sound of Shepard’s voice, from the _idea_ of Shepard in his bed.

‘Nothing special,’ Kaidan replied. His eyes were open. He could see the top of Shepard’s head, the flop of his hair, and feel the side of his hip, the hard bone, that groove between waist and hip that Kaidan’s fingers rested on and parallel to, flanking it like a private phalanx. ‘Just a t-shirt. Sweats. …No underwear.’

‘Yeah.’ Shepard sighed the word onto Kaidan’s collarbone, kissing it, kissing it again. ‘Me, neither.’

‘I had a pretty good day today,’ Kaidan continued, stroking Shepard’s back instead of rubbing the hair on his own belly. ‘I mean, I got rained on, but then dinner was good. It’d be nice to have a day like this one again sometime.’

Shepard had to angle his arm differently but then, without much warning, his hand was on Kaidan’s chest, on his stomach, thumbing the hair around his navel. ‘Cool,’ he said. ‘I had a pretty good day today, too.’

Finally, Kaidan closed his eyes. There was something about Shepard’s voice close to his skin that made him feel warm and sleepy, comfortable and uncomfortable.

Sometimes, in the winter, the summer felt like it only happened to other people, like it was something you made up to get through the whole year.

It was way, way better than drifting off with his phone next to his head and waking up the next morning realizing he’d run out the battery overnight. Sticky briefs that needed changing, the blush on his cheeks half hope and half embarrassment.

Shepard never said what he was thinking about—probably Star Wars, _still_ , the desert under Tatooine’s binary suns—and Shepard never stayed.

But he _was_ staying, sleeping in Kaidan’s arms until the rain stopped.

**END?**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys again for reading! Sorry about falling behind on comments but I will reply to all tonight! <3 I hope you enjoy!


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